I’m eating at a sushi bar called Sushi Maru with my better half. Being a Trekkie, I mentioned the Kobayashi Maru to my husband. We toasted Leonard Nimoy.

Followed by what the heck does Maru mean in Japanese.

Buckle your seat belts people we are crossing into the Neutral Zone. In Star Trek it is the “no-win scenario” or “impossible situation”. But is that what it means?

Inquiring minds use their iPhones.

After a brief search we discovered the restaurant wasn’t cleverly named Sushi “Impossible” or Sushi “Situation”. Both would have been cool. Maru according to our source meant “circle” or “round” and referred to the conveyor system transporting our meal.

Isn’t the internet great?

It also lead to another discovery. Maru the Cat. A genuine Japanese cat celebrity.

Im-paws-ible you say.

Maru, a Scottish Fold—straight ear variety—entertains nearly half a million followers on YouTube. His channel is named Mugumogu. And is the 7th most subscribed YouTube Channel in Japan.

If you believe Entertainment Weekly, he is listed along with such notable internet cat celebrities as Keyboard Cat and Nora. Not to be confused with Cat Cora—a person and fellow celebrity featured on this blog.

After the March 2011 earthquake, Mugumogu posted on Maru’s blog that he was safe. Maru has a blog . . . .

He even has his own Fresh Step commercial. My friends, that’s how you know you’ve made it to the top of the heap.

This king of the hill loves boxes. No little box blues will keep him away.

It’s amazing just how entertaining cat videos are! I don’t quite know what it is… so often I’m just like “cats are so weird!” but in the rare instance I end up watching a cat video, it’s always amusing!

Here’s another factoid for ya: Japanese commercial vessels include the word “Maru” in their name. That, by the way, is why the space ship was the Kobayashi Maru although in this case it was incorrect because military ships are not appended with “Maru”. (Also, warships never carry a person’s name.)

Thing is, ask 90% of Japanese why “Maru” is added and they will stare and stutter and probably give up, walking away and sucking their teeth.

There about a half dozen theories for the naming convention but nobody really knows for sure. Most think that “maru” which means “circle” connotes a round trip and therefore successful voyage.